Strategic Data Skills

Details

Part of series

This comprehensive online course is for people who want to work strategically with data, but don’t need or want to learn complex programming.

You will learn how to create value from data for your organisation, whilst avoiding harmful impacts. You will learn how better decisions can be made with data. You will develop both strategic and practical skills.

Want data to make an impact in your work?

This comprehensive online course is for people who want to work strategically with data, but don’t need or want to learn complex programming.

You will learn how to create value from data for your organisation, whilst avoiding harmful impacts. You will learn how better decisions can be made with data. You will develop both strategic and practical skills.

“This has been an eye-opening journey for me. Looking at data over the last six weeks I learned to understand it’s value, different ways of looking at it, the impact it can have on people’s lives and the value of predicting the future.” Gretl M.

Attendance on this course is dependent on an application. You will then need to pay for your ticket to secure your place.

If you’re interested please complete the form below and one of our team will review your application within three working days. If successful you’ll have the option of booking your place straightaway or, you can book a Q&A session with an advisor. Your advisor can answer any questions you may have and help you understand whether the course is right for you.

The course will equip you with the theoretical knowledge, practical skills and technical know-how to make good decisions using data. The course emphasises a hands-on approach to learning data skills, offering a number of interactive, online exercises that will let you try out many of the techniques and concepts covered in the taught material against real examples.

The course gives you the flexibility to plan your learning schedule. Aside from webinars (which are recorded), you can plan your own timetable for learning and assignments. In total, you can expect to commit up to five hours each week towards the required learning activities, guided by your tutors

Taking place online, over six weeks, each week will contain a mix of taught material, self-study, activities and practical exercises all carried out online.

This course equips you with the theoretical knowledge, practical skills and technical know-how to make better decisions using data. The course emphasises a hands-on approach to learning data skills, offering a number of interactive, online exercises that will let you try out many of the techniques and concepts covered in the taught material against real examples.

Week 1: Discovering open data

What is open data and what impact can it have? We will assess successful case studies of open data projects and look at how risk can be minimised through licensing and certificates.

Topics:

What is open data?

Unlocking value from open data

Open data and open standards

Understanding your rights to use data

The data spectrum

Assignments:

Discussion activity: how is data used in your organisation?

Discussion activity: favourite open data case studies

Discussion activity: your own data spectrum

Week 2: Health check – cleaning hospital data

You will begin your hands-on experience of data management with the first assignment, based upon a real case study of hospital performance data in Tanzania. This week focuses on how 80% of your time can be saved if data is collected, organised and cleaned in a consistent fashion.

Topics:

The four step process of data science/journalism

Organising data

Cleaning data

Choosing & designing schemas

Annotating and describing data

Open data and open standards

Data formats and structures

Assignment:

Practical assignment: data cleaning

Week 3: How can we improve the performance of the London Fire Brigade? (Part 1)

In this week the major case study of the course is introduced. You will begin looking at a large piece of data analysis using real incident records from the London Fire Brigade, to review the decision to close several stations. This week looks at the data processing and analysis that can help reveal the impact.

Topics:

Gathering data from a number of different sources

Evaluate the quality and usability of data

Establishing trust in data

Filtering & pivot tables

Introduction to quantitative data analysis

Introduction to qualitative data analysis

Assignment:

Practical assignment: data analysis

Week 4: How can we improve the performance of the London Fire Brigade? (Part two)

Week 4 takes the result of the analysis and challenges you addressed in week 3, to tell a compelling story from data, that includes at least one visualisation. This week introduces the theory of data visualisation and how to create a compelling story where the message pops off your screen/page.

Topics:

Data visualization formats

Data visualisation best practice

Mapping open data

Narrating your story

Practical data visualisation

Visual deception

Assignment:

Practical assignment: telling a story from data

Week 5: Open data futures

Week 5 looks at the future of open data. We look at how data standards and open APIs enable services to talk intelligently to each other and how these are already in widespread use with cloud services and big data. We discover at how Transport for London has used open data and the cloud to deliver £130m of economic benefit a year and look at how an industry has grown around this open data. In a rapidly changing data landscape we examine the role for open data in business evolution. By creating a personalised travel planner, you will explore the area of business development from a management perspective whilst also considering the potential implications of data futures.

“It’s a really good course, really well designed, the people are good. I can’t really fault it. The people running it are very good, very passionate. For an online course it was very interactive.” CRM Analyst, British Gas

“This course has been awesome and a great stepping stone to build confidence in using data no matter which industry you are from.” Director, Qina Consulting

“The assignments were the highlight of the course. They were well designed – it’s good to use real live data from a different sphere than I’m used to working in. And I really liked how they built on the previous assignment learnings.” Digital Analyst, Boots

No previous experience of data or programming is required. However, a good level of computer literacy is necessary. In particular, you need to be comfortable using spreadsheets programmes, such as Excel.

Co-founded by the inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, the ODI offers courses that are friendly, supportive and fun. No question is a silly question in our classrooms, and our expert teachers will arm you with all the practical skills you need for applying what you’ve learnt to the real world.

All slides and exercises are made available for anyone to access, use and share under an open licence.